On July 20, 1978, I joined my old friend and colleague David Bonavia for lunch at Hong Kong's "Jimmy's Kitchen."

David was THE "China Hand." By the time I met him, he had spent nearly ten years in and around China as correspondent for the Times of London. Bonavia had authored one of the definitive early books on China's opening to the outside world: "The Chinese: A Portrait." In the years ahead, I would spend many a boozy lunch with Bonavia at Beijing's Minzu Hotel hanging on his every word.

"Stick with China," advised Bonavia. "It will frustrate, anger, fascinate you but will never let you down."

I had studied Chinese in University and while I never reached anything approaching the language proficiency and expertise of Bonavia and many other China specialists, I took his advice to heart and in one way or another my life from the seventies onwards was entangled with China.

I got my first opportunity to visit China on October 14, 1978: a short visit.
Frequent visits followed.

It was difficult for a journalist in those days to obtain China visas. 
My route in was to persuade the local cadres at the Xinhua (New China News Agency) Hong Kong office that part of opening up China to the world meant letting me attend the Guangzhou or as we called it then the "Canton" Trade Fair.

So there amid the cloisonné exports and the eager young traders trying to set up textile manufacturing in the People's Republic, I got my first glimpse of the nation I had studied and written about since 1968.

Soon after the full normalization of diplomatic relations between China and the United States on January 1, 1979, Chinese Premier Deng Xiaoping summoned those American correspondents who were in Beijing at the time to the Great Hall of the People on Tiananmen Square. Representing ABC News, I was among about a dozen invited on the morning of January 5, 1979.

 The Chinese leader, in an expansive mood, entertained our questions for more than an hour. He reflected mostly on Soviet "hegemony" and the need for China and the United States in their new relationship to deal with "hegemonist ambitions."
A large spittoon had been placed just to the left of Deng's chair. We were seated in a large semi-circle facing  China's paramount leader.

As each reporter in turn asked a question, and Deng waited for his  interpreter's translation, the Chinese leader inhaled on a "Panda" cigarette, then drew up a large wad of saliva and with a loud snort projected his spittle into the awaiting vessel.

The repeated actions of the most powerful man in China interrupted the concentration of the most veteran interrogator and put us off our lunch. 

Later, Yao Wei, the head of the Foreign Ministry Press Department gathered myself and the other two network correspondents around him and asked that we not broadcast any "shots of the Premier spitting." It would not be, he said, in the interests of "friendship and cooperation."

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